D.W. Griffith Biography (Filmmaker) Best known as: Ground-breaking director of Birth of a Nation Name at birth: David Wark Griffith D.W. Griffith was an American filmmaker who is considered by many to be the most influential figure in the history of cinema. He began his career as a stage actor and writer in the first part of the 20th century. He took his stories to the early movie studios, landing at the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company in 1908. Until 1913 Griffith oversaw the production of almost all of Biograph's movies, more than 450 films. He joined Reliance-Majestic's studios, taking most of his regular actors and technicians, including his best cameraman, G.W. "Billy" Blitzer. The quality of Griffith's productions was generally considered superior to his contemporaries, and his projects became more ambitious than the standard one-reel films. His three-hour feature The Birth of a Nation (1915) was a stunning success and is considered the most important film in the development of cinema as an art.

Its racism -- the protagonists are members of the Ku Klux Klan -- keeps it from being enjoyed as a cinematic experience, but as an item of historical interest it includes all of Griffith's innovations in the language of cinema: cross-cutting, close-ups, parallel narratives, camera movement and more restrained acting. His next film, Intolerance (released in 1916), was equally ambitious but a financial disaster. In 1915 he joined with Mack Sennett and Thomas Ince to form the Triangle Corporation, but the venture failed and Griffith left in 1917. He continued making movies, having success especially with Way Down East (1920), but most of his films during the '20s lost money, including those he made with United Artists, the studio he co-founded with Douglas Fairbanks, Mary Pickford and Charlie Chaplin . As silent movies were replaced by talkies, Griffith's position in the film industry waned. His last feature, The Struggle (1931), was a failure. Although he was no longer making movies, he was honored in 1935 with a special Oscar.

His other films include Broken Blossoms (1919), Orphans of the Storm (1922) and Abraham Lincoln (1930). Extra credit: Griffith had a long working relationship with actress Lillian Gish . Copyright © 1998-2017 by Who2?, LLC. All rights reserved. Thomas H. Ince - Biography - IMDb Thomas H. Ince Jump to: Overview (3) | Mini Bio (1) | Spouse (1) | Trivia (24) | Personal Quotes (4) Overview (3) Thomas Harper Ince Mini Bio (1) Thomas H. Ince was born into a family of stage actors. He appeared on the stage at age six and worked with a number of stock companies, making his Broadway debut at 15. Vaudeville work was inconsistent, so he was a lifeguard, a promoter and part-time actor. His stage career was a failure but by 1910 he joined Biograph, and after one film, Carl Laemmle 's Independent Motion Pictures hired Ince as a director.

Ince went to Cuba to make films out of the reach of the Motion Pictures Patent Company -- the trust that attempted to crush all independent production companies and corner the market on film production -- but his output was small. In 1911 he joined the New York Motion Picture Corp. [NYMPC] and headed to California to make Westerns. Ince insisted that all scripts be thoroughly planned out before filming began, which would give him the opportunity to film several scenes at the same time with assistant directors. One of those directors was Francis Ford , the brother of John Ford . In 1912, NYMPC and other independent studios merged to form Universal Pictures. Ince built a city of motion picture "sets" on a stretch of land in Santa Monica Mountains called "Inceville" where he shot many of the outdoor locales for his films. At the end of 1912, Ince hired William Desmond Taylor to act in his film Counterfeiters (1914). In 1913 Ince made over 150 films, mostly Westerns and Civil War dramas. He would also employ directors Frank Borzage , Fred Niblo , Jack Conway , and Henry King .

In 1914 Ince hired William S. Hart as an actor who could also direct his own films. Ince made the epic The Battle of Gettysburg (1913) and thereafter concentrated on longer films as he moved from director to producer. He employed thousands of technicians and made movies on an assembly-line method. In 1915 he joined D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett to form the Triangle Motion Picture Company built in Culver City on Washington Boulevard (now the site of Sony Pictures). Fortunately, Hart was a profitable star who kept the company afloat. In 1916 Ince produced and directed the anti-war film Civilization (1915), which cost $100,000 and returned $800.000. Always looking for new talent, Ince signed Olive Thomas , the rising young star of the Ziegfeld Midnight Frolic, to star in his films. At the end of World War I, Ince broke with Triangle and joined his nemesis Adolph Zukor to form Paramount/Artcraft and built yet another studio in Culver City which had a southern mansion facade of Mount Vernon (and later was bought by David O.

Selznick ). Ince developed a series of comedies pairing Douglas MacLean and Doris May , and their first picture, 23 1/2 Hours' Leave (1919), was successful. When William S. Hart's contract ended, however, he left the company and Zukor forced Ince out of Paramount/Artcraft. In December 1919 Thomas Ince, Mack Sennett , Marshall Neilan , Maurice Tourneur , Allan Dwan and other directors joined to form Associated Producers, an independent film alliance. 'Roscoe 'Fatty' Arbuckle' had been approached, but he had no desire to join the group. In 1922 Associated Producers merged with First National. On February 1, 1922, Paramount director William Desmond Taylor was shot to death in his bungalow and one of the suspects, although never a serious one, was Mack Sennett , who stated that he spent the night at the home of Ince. In 1924 Ince was one of several Hollywood people aboard the yacht of newspaper magnate William Randolph Hearst when he suddenly fell ill.

Ince was rushed aboard a train bound for Del Mar where his wife, her son, and a physician met him and accompanied him home where he died. The Los Angeles Times supposedly released the headline "Movie producer Shot on Hearst yacht!" but other papers including the New York Times said that Ince died of heart failure. One of the stories that sensationalized Ince's sudden death said that Hearst shot Ince and that the bullet wasn't meant for Ince but for Charles Chaplin , whom Hearst had long suspected of carrying on a secret affair with his mistress, actress Marion Davies . Supposedly, Hearst inadvertently walked into Davies' cabin and caught her and Chaplin in bed together and fired several shots, missing Chaplin but hitting Ince. Another rumor circulated that columnist Louella Parsons was also on board that day and witnessed the shooting, although other sources say Parsons was in New York at the time. Supposedly, in exchange for keeping quiet, Hearst promised Parsons a lifetime job as the Hollywood reporter for his newspaper chain (she was already employed by Hearst in 1923 as a reporter).

Ince biographers have disputed the Hearst conspiracy and argued that Ince had been ill for some time with ulcers and had suffered from angina with a previous heart attack. - IMDb Mini Biography By: Tony Fontana <tony.fontana@spacebbs.com> Spouse (1) ( 19 October 1907 - 19 November 1924) (his death) (2 children) Trivia (24) Younger brother of John Ince , elder brother of Ralph Ince . Father of Thomas H. Ince Jr. . He was taken ill while on board William Randolph Hearst 's yacht on November 18, 1924. Also on board were Marion Davies , Charles Chaplin , among other celebrities. Inceville, located where Sunset Boulevard reaches the Pacific Ocean, is named for him. It was in Inceville that he established his first studio, before moving his studio to Culver City. Built his Culver City studio in 1918. After his death, it was sold to Cecil B. DeMille , who later sold it to RKO, when it became known as RKO Culver. The studio was leased to David O.

Selznick in the late 1930s. Gone with the Wind (1939) was filmed there, razing a number of old DeMille sets for the burning of Atlanta sequence. When Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz bought RKO in 1956, the lot became Desilu Culver. In the mid 1980s, Grant Tinker and Gannett Corp. bought the lot. They sold it to Sony in 1991, who in turn sold it to PCCP Studio City Los Angeles, who now operates it under the name The Culver Studios. The studio is now rented by all the major studios for both film and TV work. Co-founder of Associated Producers Inc., formed in 1919. Owner of production company Thomas H. Ince Corp. Owner of production company Thomas H. Ince Productions. Seeing a short film with Tsuru Aoki , a Japanese actress living in California, Ince realized the potential advantages of casting Asian players in Hollywood films. This was during a time when white actors wearing eye makeup were portraying Asians, due to the strong anti-Asian sentiment among the American public.

This would remain the norm in American film for decades to come. When Aoki met Ince, she introduced him to another Japanese stage player, Sessue Hayakawa . Ince hired both Aoki and Hayakawa for a series of films that proved popular and gained even more notoriety when the Japanese couple fell in love and married as Ince stars. Some of the Aoki-Hayakawa films were Far Eastern stories, but others cast them as Native Americans. To maintain his status as a safe investment, by the early 1920s Ince had to conceal the deteriorating state of his health, as he was suffering from ulcers and angina. Contrary to the portrait of Ince in The Cat's Meow (2001) as a washed-up producer lucky to make a film a year, in the year before his death in 1924 15 Ince movies were released and, at the time of his death, he had nine more before the cameras that were completed posthumously. By 1920 Ince was starting his own independent firm, hoping to lavish more time on fewer movies.

Instead, he had to juggle arrangements constantly, releasing through a variety of distributors and having to be sure they actually paid what he was owed in ticket sales. To help lower overhead on his studio, Ince's facility was available for rental by other independents, but this often meant he had to guarantee their loans and provide creative input. To secure bank loans to make his own productions, Ince had to use completed films as collateral. Hollywood had adopted Ince's model of a producer-centered team of writers and directors, but in turn the role of an independent became ever more tenuous as the studio system took shape. It was while working as a lifeguard in 1902 in Atlantic Highlands, NJ, that a young Ince became convinced that money could be made by staging vaudeville in the town's seaside pavilion. He was wrong. Ince created a second production unit in 1912 under the direction of Francis Ford , who later said that Ince had no scruples in claiming credit for the script and direction of pictures that turned out better than expected. Ince made more than 150 films in 1913.

Ince's films were praised for their sharp cinematography and his use of newly developed technology. The new Bell and Howell turret camera was employed nearly exclusively on all Ince films after 1912. Ince's differences with contractee William S. Hart resulted from the producer's reluctance to give a fair share of the star's enormously profitable films. However, they ultimately parted company after an argument over Hart's horse Fritz the Horse , which Ince thoroughly disliked. After the death of Wallace Reid from drugs, Ince capitalized on the incident by casting Reid's widow in the anti-drug film Human Wreckage (1923), one of the first films to use psychedelic sets. There are no known surviving prints of Ince's first feature, The Battle of Gettysburg (1913), released as a five-reeler in December 1913 by Mutual, although a very detailed script still exists. It is notable for its inclusion of specific dialogue, directions for actors' facial expressions and camera directions for the eight cameras that were used to film the epic. Although Ince would go on to produce other features, this is likely the only one he personally directed. Thomas H. Ince photographs Thomas H.

Ince photographs Table of contents Description The Thomas H. Ince photographs span the years 1912-1925 and encompass 10.2 linear feet. The collection consists of 8,794 black-and-white photographic prints. There are scenes from 579 films, as well as images of various film personalities and the Ince family. Also included are photographs of the Ince residence in Beverly Hills and of the Ince Studio in Culver City. Background Thomas H. Ince was an American director and producer active in film from 1910 to 1924. In 1911 Ince joined Kessel and Bauman's New York Motion Picture Company producing and directing films from the company's Los Angeles studio. Ince's reputation for producing quality films was so renowned that the studio became known as Inceville. In 1915, Ince and fellow principals Mack Sennett and D.W. Griffith, formed the Triangle Film Corporation. In 1918 Ince left Triangle and built his own studio in Culver City.

Ince and other filmmakers formed Associated Producers in 1919, which merged with First National in 1922. A pioneer filmmaker, Ince is regarded by film historians as the inventor of the role of "film producer," as he was among the first to organize production methods into a disciplined system of filmmaking. Extent Thomas H. Ince | Biography and Filmography | 1882 Biography Usually considered the father of the moviemaking studio system, Thomas H. Ince was a true innovator, defining the creative and industrial role of producer, institutionalizing the continuity script, and as early as 1912, constructing the blueprint for departmentalized, factory-like studio filmmaking that would become the town's model. Ince brought discipline and structure to the haphazard film industry, placed great emphasis on hiring technicians with their own specialties instead of tackling all facets of the project on his own; because of this he became one of the most important forces in early American cinema. Upon his arrival to Hollywood in 1912, he built and acquired what became Inceville, a fully-equipped moviemaking facility that became the first modern Hollywood studio.

It was there that he helped steer Hollywood toward feature films with the five-reel epic, "The Battle of Gettysburg" (1913), which was since been lost to time. Meanwhile, he formed the Triangle Film Corporation with D.W. Griffith and Mack Sennett, and released some of his most notable films, including "The Italian" (1915), "The Coward" (1915), "Hell's Hinges" (1916) and his most famous production, "Civilization" (1916). He later formed Thomas H. Ince Studios in 1918, which became the Culver Studios later in the decade, but by this time his power began to wane, thanks to the larger studios adopting his methods and using their vaster sums of wealth to gain a more solid foothold. Making fewer movies, Ince oversaw the anti-drug exposé "Human Wreckage" (1923) and the adaptation of Eugene O'Neil's "Anna Christie" (1923).

But before he could rebound, Ince died of a heart attack while aboard a yacht owned by William Randolph Hearst, though rumors swirled that the publishing mogul accidentally shot him while aiming for Charlie Chaplin, who was having an affair with Hearst's mistress, Marion Davies. Though no solid proof existed of the accusation, Ince nonetheless became forever associated with 1920s scandal-laden Hollywood despite the many innovations he made that were still being utilized in the 21st century. Born on Nov. 6, 1882 in Newport, R.I., Ince was raised by his father, John, an actor-turned-theatrical agent, and his mother, Emma, also an actress. Just like his parents, Ince - along with his two brothers, John and Ralph - began acting, making his stage debut at six years old and working in a number of stock theater companies throughout his youth. When he was 15, Ince appeared on Broadway for the first time and worked intermittently in vaudeville, forcing him to take odd jobs like a lifeguard and promoter to get by.

Between 1906 and 1910, he made a handful of acting appearances in film, but was essentially an underemployed stage actor when he took his last bit part in a Biograph film in November 1910, where he also met future wife Eleanor Alice Kershaw, who also acted for the company. A month later he was given a chance to direct for Carl Laemmle's Independent Motion Pictures (IMP), where his first film was "Little Nell's Tobacco" (1910). In 1911, Ince took a company of IMP players and technicians to Cuba where he and fellow fledgling director George Loene Tucker made several one-reelers featuring Mary Pickford. Before the year was out, however, he joined the New York Motion Picture Company (NYMP) as a director and in November was sent to Edendale, CA to shoot Westerns for the company's Bison brand name. Other film companies had also set up smaller facilities in Southern California when Ince arrived - including Mack Sennett's Keystone, which like Ince's Bison, was a subsidiary of Adam Kessel and Charles O.

Bauman's NYMP - but Ince's operation led all others in the expansion of production facilities and the quality and quantity of films being manufactured. In 1912, Ince's company took an important step by acquiring the properties and services of the Miller Bros. 101 Ranch and Wild West Show. Not only did this give the Bison 101 film company a stable of talented and authentic cowboy and Indian performers for its Westerns, it also included the acquisition of made-to-order sets, costumes, props and, most important of all, 18,000 acres of land around Santa Monica and the Santa Ynez canyon. Under Ince's guidance, NYMP constructed a vast infrastructure for film production that he dubbed Inceville. The lot included administrative office buildings, multiple glass-enclosed shooting stages, huge standing sets, laboratories, physical plant facilities, hundreds of dressing rooms, commissaries, property and wardrobe warehouses - in short, the first true modern Hollywood studio. The building of Inceville signified not only the increasing size of the nascent film industry but also institutionalized a new method of film production.

Before 1912, production - as practiced, for example, by the Motion Picture Patents Company units, or even IMP's company that Ince had taken to Cuba - usually centered on a director and his camera operator leading a small band of actors and craftspeople in the improvisatory shooting of one-reel narrative. Ince's new model, however, placed production power in the hands of a central producer - namely himself. By mid-1912, Ince found the output of his company exceeding what he could personally direct, so he split his personnel into two units, with Francis Ford directing those films which Ince did not handle himself. Within the next few years, the number of directors working for Ince expanded, with a number of talents surpassing Ford, including William S. Hart, Frank Borzage, Jack Conway, Raymond B. West, Reginald Barker and Fred Niblo. In 1913, the need for greater control over the expanding production process invited other significant changes at Inceville. NYMP hired an accountant, George Stout, as a production manager - another Ince innovation - and allowed him to reorganize the Ince operation into systematically controlled departments with strict divisions of labor.

Ince became officially director-general, an executive who directed, wrote and edited little himself, but exerted greater control over the conception and execution of film production - in short creating what became the duties of a modern producer. His principle mechanism for keeping films on budget and giving creative instructions was his insistence on detailed continuity scripts. Rather than merely provide directors with rough scenarios or let them work without any script, Ince delivered a pre-planned, shot-for-shot blueprint of each film - what became later known as a shooting script. A staff of scenario editors assisted Ince in constructing each film on paper: scenes were numbered and broken down by shot and camera set-up, instructions on smaller details, such as camera speed, lighting effects, acting styles and post-production procedures like tinting, special effects and title cards, were also indicated. Presenting his directors with such scripts weeks in advance of shooting allowed for greater efficiency, and the resulting profitability led the major companies which rose to prominence in the teens to adopt similar practices. By 1913, others were technically directing his company's films, but the label "Thomas H. Ince Presents," which appeared on the title cards, remained accurate given the vast amount of personnel supervision the producer gave each film.

The Ince name became associated with well-constructed action dramas and consistent popular appeal. But whatever his contribution to the art of filmmaking, Ince's career remained more significant for its marked entrepreneurship and constant involvement in the shifts of power that took place as the American film industry made its transition from Patents Company domination in 1912 to vertically integrated Hollywood studios of the 1920s. During this decade in which companies merged, competed, diversified, invested and expanded, Thomas Ince remained one of the industry's chief power brokers. With the diversification of his company into three new brands - Kay Bee, Broncho and Domino - Ince began to produce not only Westerns and action dramas, but a variety of subjects, most notably a popular series of Japanese idylls, including "The Wrath of the Gods" (1914) and "The Typhoon" (1914); the latter made an instant film star of Sessue Hayakawa and his wife Tsuru Aoki.

He also produced anti-German historical propaganda films to aid the WWI effort, such as "The Despoiler (1915)," "Claws of the Hun" (1918) and "The Kaiser's Shadow" (1915). Significantly, he was steadily increasing the length of his productions, most notably with the successful five-reel release of his epic "The Battle of Gettysburg" (1913), which helped speed the industry's move to feature-length films. The epic film was since lost, with only a mere 60 seconds of footage surviving the ravages of time. By 1915, Ince was recognized alongside D.W. Griffith as film's most prominent producer-director. With Griffith and associate Mack Sennett, Ince formed the three powerful elements of the Triangle Film Corporation, a major new production-distribution-exhibition company with capital holdings of $5 million. Mutual's Harry Aitken took on the role of president and attempted to create the nation's first vertically integrated film corporation, with Ince and his former employers Bauman and Kessel holding posts as vice presidents.

To enhance production values, the original Inceville studio - which had been ravaged by a number of fires - was sold and a new half-million-dollar facility was built in Culver City, CA. The new lot initially featured five stages, some one thousand employees, and expanded creative departments. Triangle's strategy was to offer prestige pictures of feature length and, through the strength of their producers' reputations, charge greater prices for their films. Ince responded with productions like "The Italian" (1915), William Hart's "Hell's Hinges" (1916) and his trademark expressive epics like the Civil War drama "The Coward" (1915) and his most famous production, "Civilization" (1916). Despite some impressive success from Ince, Triangle soon dissolved. Its distribution company had successfully recruited W.W. Hodkinson, founder of the powerful Paramount distributorship who had been forced out by Adolf Zukor, and the company was in the process of leasing a chain of first class theaters.

But internal mismanagement at Triangle, along with the huge losses incurred by Griffith's "Intolerance" (1916) and the huge salaries paid to theatrical stars who did not attract film audiences, added up to financial failure by 1918. Even in the face of Triangle's major failure, Ince remained a strong force in film production, though at this time his power was in decline, particularly in light of other studios adapting his methods. In 1918, he formed his own production company and with financing from Harry Aitken, again moved to a second lot in Culver City, the first having been sold to Sam Goldwyn. His new production office was a white colonial mansion modeled after George Washington's Mount Vernon, which in later years became a familiar sight as the logo for David O. Selznick's films. Although his films continued to make considerable profits, his output slowed to several features a year as he was forced to compete against vertically integrated studios, which had grown far more powerful than independent producers like Ince. In 1918-19, Ince briefly distributed through rival Paramount and then Metro.

But he attempted to re-enter the top echelon of the industry by coordinating the founding of Associated Producers, Inc. in October 1919. Ince became president of this national distribution firm that had the partnership of several major producer-directors, including Mack Sennett, Allan Dwan, Maurice Tourneur, Marshall Nielan and George Loane Tucker. Associated Pictures failed to compete with Paramount and merged with another major, First National, in September 1922. The independent Ince production company released its features through First National. By the early 1920s, the Ince Company was being edged out of the studio system which was rapidly becoming known as Hollywood. He did attempt to compete on other levels, however, and in 1921 he and other producers combined with banking interests to form the Cinematic Finance Corporation, an effort to make production loans available to producers with a proven track record. Following the death of film star Wallace Reid by drug overdose, Ince and Reid's widow produced "Human Wreckage" (1923), an anti-drug exploitation expose on the subject of addiction.

In a bid to regain falling prestige, Ince bought the rights to Eugene O'Neill's Anna Christie and released a high-class adaptation starring Blanche Sweet in 1923. Although his producing prowess was surpassed by the grander-scaled, star-laden film studios of early Hollywood, Ince was still a major independent producer when his name once again received worldwide publicity and unfortunately inextricably tied to scandal for eternity. Already scandalized by the Fatty Arbuckle trial and other so-called sins of Hollywood, the film community was further traumatized when Ince fell fatally ill while on a yachting trip with newspaper baron William Randolph Hearst and his movie star mistress, Marion Davies. He reportedly suffered from acute indigestion and was taken to shore by Dr. Daniel Goodman - a guest of Hearst - in a water taxi when the yacht was off the coast in San Diego. Once on shore, Ince was put on a train bound for Los Angeles, only to be removed when his condition worsened. He was taken to a hotel in Del Mar, where he received further treatment by another doctor, before he completed the trip back to Hollywood. Ince died the next day on Nov.

19, 1924 from a heart attack. He was only 42 years old. But before he was even laid to rest, whispers soon materialized that Ince in fact took the potshot intended for Charlie Chaplin, whom Hearst suspected of having illicit relations with Davies. Several versions of the story circulated, the most popular being that Hearst found Chaplin and Davies in an embrace and drew a gun; Davies' screams drew Ince from his bed and he took a bullet meant for Chaplin. Circumstantial evidence cropped up, including a mysterious headline in the Los Angeles Times that declared Hearst shot Ince, only to disappear in the evening edition. With the Hollywood rumor mill in high gear, facts of the various stories changed and the truth of what really happened were never known. Ince's death, however, officially remained a heart attack, while the film industry closed its doors on the story. So iconic was the tale, however, that over 70 years later, director and cinephile Peter Bogdanovich told his own version of what may or may not have occurred on the yacht in his feature homage "The Cat's Meow" (2001), starring Cary Elwes as Ince.

"As for the real Ince, his name would sadly remain associated with the Hollywood scandals of the 1920s rather than for his pioneering contributions to the production practices of modern studio filmmaking. Museum of the Moving Image - Collection - Browse Back History notes Formed in 1915 under the leadership of Harry Aitken, the Triangle Film Corporation consisted of three production companies headed by some of the most noted producers of the time: Fine Arts (D.W. Griffith), Kay-Bee (Thomas H. Ince), and Keystone (Mack Sennett). An early attempt at vertical integration, Triangle aimed to produce and release multiple-reel films, leasing major metropolitan theaters to showcase its productions. Overhead costs and poor management cut into Triangle's profits and all three producers soon left for Paramount. Triangle ended production in 1917. Type D.W. Griffith | Silent Films Wiki | Fandom powered by Wikia Edit Griffith was born in La Grange, Kentucky to Jacob "Roaring Jake" Griffith and Mary Perkins Oglesby. His father was a Confederate Army colonel, a Civil War hero, and a Kentucky legislator. D.W.

was educated by his older sister, Mattie , in a one-room country school. His father died when he was 7, upon which the family experienced serious financial hardships. At age 14, D.W.'s mother abandoned the farm and moved the family to Louisville where she opened a boarding house, which failed shortly. D.W. left high school to help with the finances, taking a job first in a dry goods store, and, later, in a bookstore. Griffith began his career as a hopeful playwright but met with little success; only one of his plays was accepted for a performance. [2] Griffith decided to instead become an actor, and appeared in many plays as an extra. [3] Film career Edit In 1907, Griffith, still having goals for becoming a successful playwright, went to New York and attempted to sell a script to Edison producer Edwin Porter . [2] Porter rejected Griffith's script, but gave him an acting part in Rescued From An Eagle's Nest [2] Finding his way into the motion picture business, he soon began to direct a huge body of work.

In 1908, Griffith accepted an acting job for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company , commonly known as Biograph, in New York City. At Biograph, Griffith's career in the film industry would also change forever. [4] In 1908, Biograph's main director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon, Jr., took his place. [5] McCutcheon, Jr., however, was not able to bring the studio good success. [4] As a result, Biograph head Henry Marvin decided to give Griffith the position; [4] Griffith then made his first movie for the company, The Adventures of Dollie. Biograph was the first company to shoot a movie in Hollywood, California , the film In Old California (1910). Influenced by the Italian feature film Cabiria (1914), Griffith was convinced that feature films were commercially viable. He produced and directed the Biograph film Judith of Bethulia (1914), one of the earliest feature films to be produced in the United States. However, Biograph believed that longer features were not viable.

According to actress Lillian Gish , "[Biograph] thought that a movie that long would hurt [the audience's] eyes". Because of this, and the film's budget overrun (it cost US$30,000 dollars to produce), Griffith left Biograph and took his whole stock company of actors with him, and joined the Mutual Film Corporation and formed a studio, with Majestic Studio manager Harry Aitken [6] known as Reliance-Majestic Studios (which was later renamed Fine Arts Studio). [7] His new production company became an autonomous production unit partner in Triangle Film Corporation along with Thomas Ince and Keystone Studios' Mack Sennett ; the Triangle Film Corporation was headed by Griffith's partner Harry Aitken, who was released from the Mutual Film Corporation [6] and his brother Roy. Through Reliance-Majestic Studios , he produced The Clansman (1915), which would later be known as The Birth of a Nation . Historically, The Birth of a Nation was the first blockbuster. It is considered important by film historians as one of the first feature length American films (most previous films had been less than one hour long), and arguably it changed the industry standard to one still recognized today.

[8] It was enormously popular, breaking box office records, but aroused controversy in the way it expressed the racist views held by many in the era (it depicts Southern pre- Civil War black slavery as benign, and the Ku Klux Klan as a band of heroes restoring order to a post- Reconstruction black-ruled South ). Although these views matched the opinions of many American historians of the day (and indeed, long afterwards), the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People campaigned against the film, but was unsuccessful in suppressing it. It would go on to become the most successful box office attraction of its time. "They lost track of the money it made," Lillian Gish once remarked in a Kevin Brownlow interview. Among the people who profited by the film was Louis B. Mayer , who bought the rights to distribute The Birth of a Nation in New England . With the money he made, he was able to begin his career as a producer that culminated in the creation of Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer studios. Margaret Mitchell , who wrote Gone with the Wind , was also inspired by Griffith's Civil War epic.

However, after seeing The Birth of a Nation, audiences in some major northern cities also responded by rioting over the film's racial content. [9] After The Birth of a Nation had run its course in theaters, Griffith would also respond to the negative reception a vast amount of critics gave the film through his next film Intolerance , which dealt with the effects of intolerance in four different historical periods: the Fall of Babylon; the Crucifixion of Christ; the Massacre of the Huguenots; and a modern story. During its release, however, Intolerance was not a financial success; although it had good box office turn-outs, the film did not bring in enough profits to cover the lavish road show that accompanied it. [10] Like The Birth Of A Nation, Griffith put a huge budget into the film's production, which was also a key factor in its failure at the box office. [11] The production partnership was dissolved in 1917, so Griffith went to Artcraft (part of Paramount ), then to First National (1919-1920). At the same time he founded United Artists , together with Charlie Chaplin , Mary Pickford , and Douglas Fairbanks .

At United Artists, Griffith continued to make films, but never could achieve box office grosses as high as either The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance. [12] Later Film Career Edit Though United Artists survived as a company, Griffith's association with it was short-lived, and while some of his later films did well at the box office, commercial success often eluded him. Griffith features from this period include Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), Dream Street (1921), and America (1924). Of these, the first three were successes at the box office. [13] Griffith was forced to leave United Artists after Isn't Life Wonderful? (1924) failed at the box office, and returned to Paramount as a director. [14] Griffith made a part-talkie Lady of the Pavements (1929) and only two full-sound films, Abraham Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931). Neither was successful, and he never made another film.

For the last seventeen years of his life, Griffith lived as a virtual hermit in Los Angeles. In 1936, director Woody Van Dyke who had worked as Griffith's apprentice on Intolerance , asked Griffith to help him shoot the famous earthquake sequence for San Francisco . Though Griffith was uncredited, the Clark Gable - Jeanette MacDonald - Spencer Tracy blockbuster was the top-grossing film of the year. [15] Death Edit He died of cerebral hemorrhage (stroke) in 1948 on the way to a Hollywood hospital, after being discovered unconscious in his room at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Los Angeles, where he had been living alone. [1] There was a large public service in his honor at the Hollywood Masonic Temple, where numerous stars came to pay their last respects. He is buried at Mount Tabor Methodist Church Graveyard in Centerfield, Kentucky . [16] In 1950, The Director's Guild of America provided a stone and bronze monument for his gravesite. Legacy Edit Motion picture legend Charles Chaplin called Griffith "The Teacher of us All". This sentiment was widely shared.

Filmmakers as diverse as John Ford , Alfred Hitchcock and Orson Welles have spoken of their respect for the director of Intolerance . Regardless of whether he actually invented new techniques in film grammar, he seems to have been among the first to understand how these techniques could be used to create an expressive language. In early shorts such as Biograph's The Musketeers of Pig Alley (1912) which was the first "Gangster film", we can see how Griffith's attention to camera placement and lighting heighten mood and tension. In making Intolerance the director opened up new possibilities for the medium, creating a form that seems to owe more to music than to traditional narrative. Griffith was honored on a 10-cent postage stamp by the United States issued May 5, 1975. In 1953, the Directors Guild of America instituted the D.W. Griffith Award , its highest honor. Its recipients included Stanley Kubrick , David Lean , John Huston , Woody Allen , Akira Kurosawa , John Ford , Ingmar Bergman , Alfred Hitchcock , and Griffith's friend Cecil B. DeMille .

On December 15, 1999, however, DGA President Jack Shea and the DGA National Board—without membership consultation (though unnecessary according to DGA's regulations)—announced that the award would be renamed the DGA Lifetime Achievement Award because Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation had "helped foster intolerable racial stereotypes". The following living recipients of the award agreed with the guild's decision: Francis Ford Coppola and Sidney Lumet . On December 10, 2008 Hollywood Heritage Museum hosted a screening of Griffith's earliest films, to commemorate the centennial since his start in film. [17] On January 22, 2009 the Oldham History Center in La Grange, Kentucky opened a 15 seat theatre in Griffith's honor. The theatre features a library of Griffith films to choose from. [18] Film preservation D.W. Griffith has five films preserved in the United States National Film Registry as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant".

These films are Lady Helen's Escapade (1909), A Corner in Wheat (1909), The Birth of a Nation (1915), Intolerance: Love's Struggle Throughout the Ages (1916), and Broken Blossoms (1919). Selected filmography WhatWasThere | Keystone Studios in Los Angeles, California - 1910s 1910s Keystone Studios Description Keystone Studios was an early movie studio founded in Edendale, California in 1912 as the Keystone Pictures Studio by Mack Sennett with backing from Adam Kessel and Charles O. Bauman, owners of the New York Motion Picture Company. The company filmed in and around Glendale and Silver Lake for several years, and was owned by the Mutual Film Corporation between 1912 and 1915. The studio is perhaps best remembered for the era under Mack Sennett when he created the slapstick antics of the Keystone Kops and for the "Sennett Bathing Beauties." Charlie Chaplin got his start at Keystone when Sennett hired him fresh from his vaudeville career to make silent films.

Charlie Chaplin at Keystone Studios is a 1993 compilation of some of the most notable films Chaplin made at Keystone, documenting his transition from vaudeville player to true comic film actor to director. In 1915 Keystone Studios became an autonomous production unit of the Triangle Film Corporation with D. W. Griffith and Thomas Ince. In 1917 Sennett gave up the Keystone trademark and organized his own company. Many other important actors also began their careers at Keystone, including Harold Lloyd, Gloria Swanson, Louise Fazenda, Raymond Griffith, Ford Sterling, Fatty Arbuckle, Marie Dressler, Mabel Normand, Ben Turpin, Harry Langdon and Chester Conklin. More at User D. W. Griffith (Film Maker) - Pics, Videos, Dating, & News D. W. Griffith Male Born Jan 22, 1875 David Llewelyn Wark "D. W. " Griffith was a premier pioneering American film director. He is best known as the director of the epic 1915 film The Birth of a Nation and the subsequent film Intolerance (1916).

Griffith's film The Birth of a Nation made pioneering use of advanced camera and narrative techniques, and its immense popularity set the stage for the dominance of the feature-length film in the United States.… Read More related links Briefs: Olive Festival Is Today Corning Observer Google News - Aug 26, 2011 'offered from 7:30-9 am Thursday, Sept. 2. There is no cost to members of the Tehama County Employer Advisory Council, nonmember fee is $20. Guest speaker Robert D. Griffith directs Nystrom &amp; Company LLP&#39;s forensic auditing practice and will speak on' Briefs: Farmer's Market's Last Friday Corning Observer Google News - Aug 23, 2011 'Guest speaker Robert D. Griffith directs Nystrom &amp; Company LLP&#39;s forensic auditing practice and will speak on fraud, and risk and prevention factors surrounding embezzlement. To RSVP, contact Kathy Garcia at 529-7000 or email kgarica@ncen.org' Harvey Griffith Jr.

The Star Democrat Google News - Aug 19, 2011 'Born June 6, 1967, in Easton, Mr. Griffith was the son of the late Harvey D. Griffith Sr. and Gertrude Frances Mitchell Griffith. He grew up in Denton and attended Caroline County Public Schools. He and his family lived in Harrington, Del.,' Wanted Houston Man Found Dead Wgmd Radio Google News - Aug 17, 2011 'Houston-Delaware State Troopers Tuesday August 16th recovered the body of Harvey D. Griffith Jr-44 of Houston Delaware. Griffith was wanted for charges related to a domestic disturbance and aggravated menacing of Law Enforcement Officers' Learn about the memorable moments in the evolution of D. W. Griffith. CHILDHOOD 1875 Birth Born on January 22, 1875. THIRTIES 1907 32 Years Old A year earlier, in 1907, Griffith, still struggling as a playwright, traveled to New York in an attempt to sell a script to Edison Studios producer Edwin Porter.

… Read More Porter rejected Griffith's script, but gave him an acting part in Rescued from an Eagle's Nest instead. Finding this attractive, Griffith began to explore a career as an actor in the motion picture business. Read Less In 1908, Griffith accepted a role as a stage extra in Professional Jealousy for the American Mutoscope and Biograph Company, commonly known as Biograph, where he would meet his future, favorite cameraman, G. W. "Billy" Bitzer. … Read More At Biograph, Griffith's career in the film industry would change forever. Read Less In 1908, Biograph's main director Wallace McCutcheon grew ill, and his son, Wallace McCutcheon, Jr., took his place. … Read More McCutcheon, Jr., however, was not able to bring the studio any success. As a result, Biograph co-founder, Henry "Harry" Marvin, decided to give Griffith the position; and the young man made his first short movie for the company, The Adventures of Dollie.

Griffith would end up directing forty-eight shorts for the company that year.<br /><br /> His short In Old California (1910) was the first film shot in Hollywood, California. Four years later he produced and directed his first feature film Judith of Bethulia (1914), one of the earliest to be produced in the United States. At the time, Biograph believed that longer features were not viable. According to actress Lillian Gish, the company thought that "a movie that long would hurt audience's eyes".<br /><br /> Because of company resistance to his goals, and his cost overruns on the film (it cost $30,000 to produce), Griffith left Biograph. He took his stock company of actors with him and joined the Mutual Film Corporation. He formed a studio with the Majestic Studio manager Harry Aitken; it became known as Reliance-Majestic Studios (and was later renamed Fine Arts Studio).

His new production company became an autonomous production unit partner in Triangle Film Corporation along with Thomas Ince and Keystone Studios' Mack Sennett; the Triangle Film Corporation was headed by Griffith's partner Harry Aitken, who was released from the Mutual Film Corporation, and his brother Roy. Read Less FORTIES 1915 40 Years Old … In his next film, Intolerance, Griffith believed he was responding to critics. He portrayed the effects of intolerance in four different historical periods: the Fall of Babylon; the Crucifixion of Jesus; the events surrounding the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre (during religious persecution of French Huguenots); and a modern story. During its release Intolerance was not a financial success; although it had good box office turn-outs, the film did not bring in enough profits to cover the lavish road show that accompanied it. Griffith put a huge budget into the film's production, which could not be recovered in its box office. He mostly financed Intolerence, contributing to his financial ruin for the rest of his life.

<br /><br />When his production partnership was dissolved in 1917, Griffith went to Artcraft (part of Paramount), then to First National (1919â1920). At the same time he founded United Artists, together with Charlie Chaplin, Mary Pickford, and Douglas Fairbanks. At United Artists, Griffith continued to make films, but never could achieve box office grosses as high as either The Birth of a Nation or Intolerance. Read Less He was also a producer on the 1915 film Martyrs of the Alamo. … Read More Though United Artists survived as a company, Griffith's association with it was short-lived. While some of his later films did well at the box office, commercial success often eluded him. Griffith features from this period include Broken Blossoms (1919), Way Down East (1920), Orphans of the Storm (1921), Dream Street (1921), One Exciting Night (1922) and America (1924). Of these, the first three were successes at the box office.

Griffith was forced to leave United Artists after Isn't Life Wonderful (1924) failed at the box office. He made a part-talkie, Lady of the Pavements (1929), and only two full-sound films, Abraham Lincoln (1930) and The Struggle (1931). Neither was successful, and after The Struggle he never made another film. Read Less LATE ADULTHOOD 1936 61 Years Old In 1936, director Woody Van Dyke, who had worked as Griffith's apprentice on Intolerance, asked Griffith to help him shoot the famous earthquake sequence for San Francisco, but did not give him any film credit. … Read More Starring Clark Gable, Jeanette MacDonald and Spencer Tracy, it was the top-grossing film of the year. Read Less

Question: The triangle film corporation was formed in 1915 by Thomas Ince, D. W. Griffith and which other director?
Answer: MACK SENNETT